Andrew Zusman is a user experience designer and blogger. He is a graduate of Netcraft Academy, an institute for user experience education, and a UX designer at Inkod-Hypera. He is an alumnus of Indiana University. Andrew is a native Hoosier, but currently resides in Tel-Aviv with his girlfriend and their dog, Indy.

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I really love websites that use parallax. Parallax, for those who have seen it but probably don’t know what it’s called, is a visualization where the background appears to move slower than the foreground.

The snow on the pages appears to move at a different speed than the navigation bar. It’s not actually the case, as everything is moving at the same speed, but it appears that way based on depth.

I love parallax because it draws me in. Many websites move, but since I can control the movements, the experience is different. Flash effects were mainly about the foreground. They were meant to be the focal point of the site, but parallax based websites are meant to enliven the background.

One-pagers are incredibly popular, and for good reason, and parallax is the perfect component for giving a better user experience to one-pager websites.

Here are a few more really fantastic examples:

–The Bagigia website (http://www.bagigia.com/) uses parallax on the mainpage as a kind of unveiling. The curtain rises to reveal the product. The effect here is really special.

–The website for Canilever Fish & Chips (http://www.cantilever-chippy.co.uk/) uses the background to set the tone for each of their different sections. The restaurant really succeeds in making a visually appealing site without being overly reliant on pictures of each individual dish they serve. Note especially the contact page has a map in the background as well as the foreground. I didn’t notice it right away. Instead the feeling here is to subtly add depth.